A health centre offering pensioners classes in bridge, cooking and IT could
inspire a revolution to help our ageing population

St Charles’s Hospital in London’s North Kensington is an unlikely setting for a revolution: the grey brick buildings, seemingly unchanged since Victorian times, squat in a quiet residential cul de sac. Yet it is here that Jill Shaw Ruddock has set up her “Second Half” centre to revolutionise the way we age.

An energetic and youthful fiftysomething, the former investment banker wants to ensure that OAPs stay active, socially connected and up to speed with contemporary activities, from Googling to social networking. Her drop-in centre opened in November and is due to be visited by the Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, tomorrow . It offers classes in gardening, bridge, CV writing, Thai cooking, Zumba and IT. Teachers, many of them volunteers, are experts in their fields. Members (there are more than 300 already) pay between £3 and £5 per one-hour lesson, with bursaries available to those unable to pay even these modest fees.

Ruddock doesn’t envisage a centre that caters exclusively for those on low-incomes, though. “Loneliness does not have class boundaries,” she stresses. “It is as important for the well-to-do retired banker to drop in and learn Pilates as it is for the octogenarian from a council estate.”

The evidence supports her: Age UK research last month revealed that one million UK pensioners feel lonely and 3.5 million do not get companionship or assistance from those living nearby. With the number of people over 80 set to treble over the next 20 years, health-care costs will spiral as a result. Indeed, Ruddock reckons that her centre could help the NHS almost as much as its patients: “We can take the strain off GPs having to cope with depression,” she says. “They can refer their patients to our centre, rather than put them on anti-depressants.”

The mood in the centre is infectiously upbeat: members chat between classes, or over a cuppa at the café selling cappuccinos (a bargain at 70p), as well as courgette and carrot cakes (Ruddock’s own recipes).

Here Denise, still glowing from the Zumba class, recently retired as a PA in an oil company, tells me she loves the “convivial, buzzy atmosphere”. Her enthusiasm is shared by Ken, an enviably youthful 84-year-old who is also learning Zumba: “Keep moving, I say, and old age won’t catch you.”

Ruddock’s initial vision, outlined in her book on the menopause, The Second Half of Your Life, was to cater exclusively for women over 50; but loneliness doesn’t distinguish between the sexes and she now welcomes men, who represent about a third of the membership. Like her book, the centre is based on five key essentials to thriving after 50: passion, purpose, exercise, a nutritious diet and, crucially, “staying connected”.

This high-powered mother-of-two convinced the NHS West London Clinical Commissioning Group to provide seed money for the Centre, as well as 3,500 sq ft of space at St Charles, and persuaded wealthy friends, former colleagues and companies to invest. The enterprise, with annual running costs of £300,000, is 95 per cent privately funded, with public funding a modest 5 per cent, a proportion she would like to see increase.

I notice that the Ruddock touch has spilled out of the centre and is visible in other parts of the hospital, including the cafeteria, where her healthy salad and vegetable recipes are served. “I told them they had to serve food that was healthy but also appetising!” she explains. “How can anyone feel good if they’re in a grey, unfriendly place eating grey, tasteless mush?”

I can’t help think that Ruddock should roll out her centre across the country – and then take over the NHS. She might just save it.